Transient Venues

A prominent telecoil logo indicates service is available at the checkout counter.

Marks & Spencer checkout, U.K.

A bank employee sits behind a desk with a telecoil placard on it.

Royal Bank of Scotland, St. Andrews

A postal employee assists a customer. A telecoil logo is displayed on the side of the service window.

Post Office, St. Andrews

A tourist getting assistance from an information centre worker. A telecoil logo is displayed on the service counter.

Tourist Information Centre. Craignure, Isle of Mull

A car at a bank drive-through. A sign indicates telecoil service is present.

Paragon Bank
Holland, MI

A man is purchasing tickets at a ticket window. A sign above the window indicates telecoil service is available.

Train Station
Canturbury, England

Induction Loop Lets passengers with hearing aids talk with the driver.

Sign in Edinburgh taxi

A sign on a service counter indicates the availability of telecoil service.

Tourist Information Centre
Liverpool England

There are many places we encounter in our daily lives where for those who hear well, their experiences are easy and their interactions go unnoticed. In a taxi, at a bank drive-up window, at a ticket booth at the train station, in an airport, at the movie theatre ticket window, at a hotel check-in desk. But if you don’t hear well, these experiences not only become burdensome, they also become interactions to avoid. For the hard of hearing, their world then gets smaller and isolation becomes a risk, leading to other potentially unhealthy life patterns. All of these places can be equipped with assistive listening systems – hearing loops preferred.

 

Possible Assistive Listening System Locations

Nearly all such venues, whether indoors or outdoors, can now have hearing loops installed. Telecoil-equipped hearing aid wearers, for example, need only hit their T switch while ordering at a fast food station or subway kiosk and, voila!, the clerk’s voice will broadcast directly through one’s hearing aids, right inside the car. At a subway station, bank teller station, or movie theater ticket window, one may stand on a looped pad that broadcasts the clerk’s voice directly into one’s head. For example, London Underground ticket offices are looped. All London taxis are looped. So are 11,500 British Post Office Ltd. branches.

In some settings, loop systems are the only feasible assistive listening systems. When ordering food at a drive-up order station, when buying a ticket from someone on the other side of a glass window, or when talking with one’s pharmacist or bank teller at a drive-up window, it’s not as feasible to borrow a receiver. 

  • Bank Tellers
  • Fast Food drive
  • Hospitality (hotels, tourism, information counters)
  • Pharmacies
  • Post offices
  • Subway kiosks
  • Transit stations (light rail, BART in San Francisco)
  • Ticket windows (movie theaters, performing arts, subways)

Resources